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Aug 21, 2013

Taggo raises funding round led by Jungle Ventures

A Fan Club is a new generation loyalty program designed to increase sales from repeat customers, much like traditional discount card programs but with built-in social media benefits. Taggo’s patented technology turns any existing Facebook fan page into a loyalty program Fan Club, eliminating most of the costs of operating traditional loyalty programs. The company’s unique business model consists of enrolling banks and payment brands as sponsors, charging nothing to merchants.
Merchants are getting up to 5 times increase in repeat sales, 7 times increase in fan acquisition rates and 10 times increase in word of mouth coverage. Banks and payment brands get merchant funded deals that are crucial to driving card usage. Merchants are reporting a 3-4 times increase in debit card usage after launching fan clubs sponsored by Singapore’s national debit card brand, NETS.

“Our goal is to revolutionize the global loyalty industry,” said Aneace Haddad, founder and CEO of Taggo. “We want to make loyalty programs more powerful, easier to deploy, and very low cost, if not free. We are very pleased to have Jungle Ventures on board today as we begin transitioning towards large scale deployments.”

Taggo’s platform drives fan clubs at over 100 restaurants and retail outlets in Singapore. Another 100 outlets are preparing to launch in August and September. The company is now pursuing sponsorships with banks and payment brands around the world.

Aneace Haddad’s prior startup became the leading provider of credit card loyalty systems to banks in 30 countries, and the foremost expert in delivering marketing enhancements linked to payment transactions. “Adding loyalty marketing features to the moment of payment is typically a complex and expensive process,” said Aneace Haddad. “I want to disrupt the market by creating very simple and inexpensive ways to do this. That’s why I launched Taggo.”

Investment by Jungle Ventures and SPRING SEEDS follows an earlier seed round with Stream Global and Singapore’s National Research Foundation (NRF).

“Jungle Ventures is one of the few Series A investors bridging the A gap in Singapore,” said Aneace Haddad. “The fact that Jungle Partners have extensive experience in helping local startups gain leadership position across the Asia Pacific region makes them a great partner for our business at this stage.”

About Taggo

Taggo’s cloud-based marketing platform drives sales by turning customers into loyal fans. Taggo turns Facebook fan pages into sales generating fan clubs, sponsored by payment brands. Our technology uses a simple, patented method to add loyalty club features to existing Facebook Pages. Merchants get more fans, more word of mouth advertising and more repeat business, all free, sponsored by payment brands, banks and credit card companies. Sponsors get more and better merchant funded offers for their cardholders, a key to driving payment brand preference at the point of sale. Visit www.taggo.me

About Jungle Ventures

Jungle Ventures is a Singapore native venture capital firm that provides early stage investments and business building infrastructure to startups across Asia Pacific. Jungle focuses on early stage investments into Singapore, India, South East Asia and other regional hotbeds of innovation. Visit www.jungle-ventures.com

About SPRING SEEDS Capital (SSC)

SPRING SEEDS Capital, an investment arm of SPRING Singapore, co-invests with independent investors into commercially viable Singapore-based start-ups with innovative and strong intellectual content that are scalable across international markets. It currently manages three funds under its portfolio - SPRING Start-up Enterprise Development Scheme (SPRING SEEDS), Business Angel Scheme (BAS) and the Biomedical Sciences Accelerator (BSA). For more information on our funding programs, please visit www.spring.gov.sg